Good Night Nurse

(1918)

AMC was running a Buster Keaton series, so I decided to catch up on some shorts I hadn’t seen. This one is very early, only Buster’s twelfth screen appearance, and it’s not really a Keaton movie at all, it’s all Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s show. He was already a big star, and Buster wasn’t. It’s pure knockabout slapstick, just one pratfall after another with very little time to set up jokes, and none of the character Buster would soon become famous for. Fatty is put in a sanitarium by his wife to dry out, and Buster is the doctor there. It’s got funny moments, but was obviously one of those that were ground out in a day or two, then on to the next one.